If you listen to our Two-Minute Drill series of mini-podcasts, you know that this week we compared the value of the NFL combine vs. all-star games as a tool for evaluation. Our take was pretty much that if you’re a player in the top 100-150, the combine is better because scouts already have a rather firm impression of your playing ability, but for lower-rated players, the chance to show your ability in pads is better than a fast 40 time or a series of well-run drills.

Of course, it’s one thing for me to feel this way, but I wanted to get feedback from my friends in the game. The response was interesting and diverse, maybe as diverse as any question I’ve posed to my friends in the business in the two years I’ve run this blog. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; former Browns GM Ray Farmer told the audience at the ITL Seminar that he prefers all-star games over the combine, simply because it’s actual football, not ‘guys that are ready to be underwear models right now,’ as he said last year.

Anyway, here’s the question I asked:

“As a general rule, do you get more out of the combine or an all-star game? Which is more valuable as an evaluation tool? I realize the scale of the combine is far greater, but in terms of how helpful, what’s better? 2-3 practices in pads with 100 guys you might not have all seen, or 350 guys doing tests in shorts, plus medicals and interviews, all in one place?”

Here’s what I got back from four friends in the business.

• “More out of the combine because those are real players. All-star games are the free agents, even (one of the more established games) is getting horrible.”
• “Depends. Always good to see small-school players compete against the bigger-school guys. Both places are great for access/ interviews. Combine wins for medical. As far as evaluating goes, both are probably overrated.”
• “If you’re asking strictly for evaluation purposes I’d say all-star games.”
• “All-star (games) for football evaluation. Overall importance is the combine because of medical.”

When it comes to draft busts, it’s rare when you hear that a player “wasn’t developed well” or “he just didn’t get the coaching he needed.” The narrative you usually hear is that the GM is dumb or the scouts weren’t thorough or “every other team knew he couldn’t play.”

I wonder if that’s fair, though. Is it true that when players fail, it’s due to poor evaluation? I posed this question to some friends in scouting, and as you might expect, there was sharp disagreement over the premise that the evaluation was wrong.

Here are four responses I got on this question:

When a high draft pick fails, what percentage of the time is it because he wasn’t as good as advertised, and what percentage that he wasn’t coached/developed well by the team?

• “That’s a hard question to answer. There’s so many different reasons. New coordinators, not used right, kid finally got money for the first time, outside influences. There’s just so many reasons. I’d really have to think on that, just because everyone is wired differently.”
• “Players don’t fail! The teams fail for grading a talent that was not good enough based on overrating his talent, or taking him high based on need when he did not belong at that pick, or not smart enough, or the player really did not love football. Those are the players that fail. . . All teams have errors in the first round. There are first-round talents that fail because their addiction, ego or work ethic gets in their way. You can name those. . . Most new GM’s were not good scouts. Their decisions and record tell the tale.”
• “I’d say a quarter or maybe even a third of the time the player is not coached/developed like scouts think he should be. Happens all the time. Majority of the time, if you take a guy high, the player will at the very least have the traits — height, weight, speed, athleticism etc. — so it’s extremely hard for a scout when you feel he’s not getting developed properly. And maybe a third of the time you missed on the guy’s talent and he just wasn’t good enough, good as you thought he was. Another third, you miss on the person. You didn’t realize how the kid was wired, whether it’s toughness, motivation, mental capacity, whatever reason.”
• “Definitely, it is more often than not getting a bad match with a system or coaching staff, oh maybe would say 50/50. I have seen coaches and been told, ‘man, who do you want to make it? We totally control who plays and who looks good.’ Actually, (our defensive coordinator) told me that sitting with a couple of scouts one night. I saw it with (our head coach) and his staff. If you brought someone in they did not like, he had no chance. (That’s) totally why personnel and coaching has to be on the same page, because a lot of (coaches) do not like personnel guys telling them, ‘this guy is good,’ when what they saw they thought (at the Senior Bowl, or during limited film study), he stunk, wanting to prove they were right. (Our head coach was) totally like that. Oh, (our head coach was) nice and fun to scouts until there is a difference of opinion on a guy and he does not get the guy he wanted. But there are some (head coaches) who know that none of us are right 100% of the time, but they respect the process.”

After dozens of conversations with scouts and executives around the game, it’s my impression that NFL teams mostly see seventh-round picks as lottery tickets. They’re high reward with low-to-no risk. They don’t usually make the roster for very long anyway, and just as importantly, the media never blames the GM when a seventh-rounder doesn’t pan out.

On the other hand, if you can hit with a seventh-rounder, you’ve done something special. Your scouting department sorted through the hundreds of players seen as undrafted free agents and picked the ones that could really make an impact. For that reason, I thought I’d take a look at the teams whose seventh-rounders have hung around the league most often.

• What’s most interesting is that there’s a runaway winner. The Vikings have 10 seventh-rounders knocking around the league, either on the 53 or on practice squads.
• The Seahawks are in second place with eight. This is interesting to me because, as we’ve seen, Seattle has been one of the most active teams in terms of relying on test scores and triangle numbers on draft day, maybe even more than performance or experience. The fact that eight players drafted in the last round by the ‘Hawks are still in the league tells me more and more teams are trying to copy their model.
• The Raiders, Eagles and Steelers are tied for third with seven players. This is an indication that maybe the Eagles under head coach/GM Chip Kelly did better on draft day than Kelly did coaching his players on the field. It also tells me the Raiders  are turning things around under GM Reggie Mackenzie, and those results are starting to show on the field. The Steelers are the Steelers, one of the best franchise in the league for several years now, and their drafting acumen reflects that.
• The Broncos are next with six, and that’s where the numbers get tougher to distill.
• There are seven teams tied with five ‘sevens’ still in the league. They are the Falcons, Bills, Browns, Cowboys, Packers, 49ers and Titans. Of this group, the Cowboys, Packers and Niners have already shown that they know how to draft. The other teams aren’t known as ‘getting it’ on draft day, but maybe they should get more credit.
• That’s the top third of the league. Now let’s take a look at the bottom third. Believe it or not, the Ravens have no seventh-rounders still active in the league. Without doing a lot of research, I don’t know if the team has gotten in the habit of trading its seventh-rounders or if the team has just rolled the dice far too often, but we couldn’t find any active as of the first week of the season. The team didn’t have a seventh-rounder this year.
• The Giants and Buccaneers each have one seventh-rounder in the league, and that’s one reason why both teams, despite having franchise quarterbacks, are still inconsistent at best.

Take a look at the full list here.

On this blog, we’ve tried to highlight an overlooked metric that really correlates with NFL success. That metric is the total number of former draftees still in the league by team, and we’ve totaled up the numbers for three years running now.

This year, we moved our September roster analysis to our Friday Wrap email that chronicles the week in the football business (if you’re interested in receiving it, click here). However, we didn’t take a look at the last three years, so I decided to do that here. I think it gives a good look at which teams are doing things right on draft day, and how they’re being rewarded in the W-L area.

The numbers are below. Here are a few quick observations.

• Most people expected the Vikings to struggle to win more than a handful of games this season after losing first Teddy Bridgewater, then A.P., by mid-September. However, the Vikes have been climbing the ladder when it comes to draftees in the league the last three years, going from No. 15 in 2014 to No. 8 last year and this year. Staying in the top half of the league all three years and in the top ten the last two has to be one reason the team has enjoyed such success.
• The Vikings aren’t the only early-season success story that could have been predicted with the grid below. Check out the Eagles — despite some bumpy years under head coach/GM Chip Kelly the last few years, the team has done pretty well on draft day, and new head coach Doug Pederson has been able to take advantage of that. The consistent play of Carson Wentz so far has given the team just the bounce it needs.
• Of the top ten teams listed below, only one (the Niners) hasn’t made the playoffs at least once in the last three years. Half have been to the playoffs at least twice, and the Packers, Bengals, Seahawks and Patriots have been all three years.
• What’s more, the AFC East (Patriots), AFC North (Steelers and Ravens) and AFC South (Texans) are led by teams on this list, while in the NFC, the East and West divisions are led (Eagles) or tied (Seahawks) by teams on the list.
• I know there’s one huge outlier in these numbers that can’t be avoided: the Niners. How can they be so far out in front despite so little on-field success the last three years? My only response is that there’s got to be a two-tiered approach here. The talent level that comes from these numbers must be coupled with consistent QB play. That’s why the Niners have struggled despite the number of winners the scouting department has picked, while the emergence of Kirk Cousins last year got the ‘Skins into the playoffs despite a lousy talent acquisition mark over the last three years. I believe the 49ers would still be at least a playoff contender had the team not been hit so hard by retirements the last few years.

As you know, there was a major announcement Monday that FBS schools will designate up to five underclassmen that NFL teams can scout essentially a full year before they can become eligible.

Presumably, this means a number of redshirt freshmen and true sophomores will become eligible for NFL evaluation this spring in anticipation of these players potentially entering the ’18 draft. Perhaps this means players already three years out of high school will be designated as ‘underclassmen.’ It’s also unclear if it will be made public which teams receive these designations.

Setting aside the questions that remain regarding the new policy, here are a few thoughts on how it might change the business of football.

• My guess is that it will become harder for fringe players to get recognized as legitimate NFL prospects. Why? Increasingly, NFL teams see draft picks after the fourth round as disposable, and this is because they only see the top 100 or so draftees as real difference-makers. These are the guys that win ballgames for you, and in an era where coaches only get two, maybe three years to prove themselves, it’s a win-now world.
• The players designated as underclassmen to watch will automatically be seen as sexier and more desirable to NFL teams. Obviously, that makes a lot of sense for the players from Florida State, Alabama and the like, but there will be other ‘middle class’ teams that designate their own players, and I expect those athletes to get more acclaim, even by scouts. It’s human nature.
• As the agent middle class starts to dissolve (given the tighter margins dictated by the NFLPA), you’re going to see a polarization of the draft. The top 30 or so agencies will strictly recruit the underclassmen designates and the very best seniors, while the other 60 percent of the agent world will try to pick up the scraps. That’s not a lot different from how things work today, but I see it hardening and becoming even more cut and dried. The big firms that have overhead and who are willing to make the investment that recruiting players entails will just have no choice.
• Maybe I’m looking at this as a glass that’s half-full, but this could be an opportunity for those smaller agents and agencies. Younger, less-established contract advisors will have to work harder to find these off-the-grid players, and will have to promote them more aggressively, but there’s a higher ceiling for these players now, I think. So maybe, just maybe, this can be a good thing for players trying to break into the biz.

If you’re an NFL fan, you’re well aware of the situation surrounding 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick. And I think even if we can’t all agree on his stand, we can agree that it’s an emotionally charged issue that could potentially divide the locker room and create ramifications that coaches and team officials don’t want to face.

I wondered if there’s any way such a situation could have been avoided in the scouting process. In other words, could scouts find out, with any degree of certainty, if a player — though honest, high in character, and far away from anything criminal — is prone to sparking this kind of situation? I asked several of my friends in scouting and I got these responses.

• “Yes, you can get this information. I believe most scouts are lazy. There’s a lot of different ways you can (get this information), and (scouts are) in a power position with an NFL shield on their chests and a logo that everyone’s like, ‘wow.’ The more you go (to a school) and talk to people (and you) make it a whole day trip, you learn about how they handle scouts and how you can get info from teams. If you give them good info (about the NFL and how evaluation works), next thing you know, (teams and their coaches are) gonna think you walk on water, and pretty soon, they’re telling you, ‘he’s really a (jerk).’ And you got that extra piece of info that all it took was a couple extra hours to get. Does it take time? 100 percent! From Year 1 to Year 2, as a scout, I figured it out, but it just takes time.”

• “Definitely you could and would find those guys. There are numerous guys through the years that you would learn of because they were different. I never (scouted) Colin, but it seems to me he had some different things in his character profile.”
• “Well, I think it’s a different circumstance (with Kaepernick), but with a lot of other players you scout, it comes up from sources at the school(, for example,) that he has “gang affiliations” but there’s been no bad behavior on his part at the school, but you know there’s a small chance something bad could happen down the road. With Kaepernick, I think he’s shifted his personality so drastically the last year or so that it would have been very tough to tell he would do something like this coming out of college. A lot of times, though, scouts may ask, ‘Is this guy a locker room lawyer?,’ or they try to find out if he’s ever been a divisive force in the building.”